‘Sufficient motive?’
‘Passion, first of all. We’re obliged to believe that, since every day we see men and women committing crimes of passion. Although if you want my opinion … Well, never mind! … Then there’s financial gain. If someone stands to benefit from another person’s death … But that’s certainly not the case with Louise, quite the contrary.’
‘Unless Ward made a will leaving everything to her, or—’
‘There’s no will leaving everything to her, believe me. David’s an Englishman, which means he’s level-headed and sees everything for what it is.’
‘Was he in love with the countess?’
Van Meulen frowned irritably.
‘That’s the third or fourth time you’ve used that word, Maigret. Please try to understand. David was the same age as me. Louise is a pretty little creature, amusing, fascinating even. In addition, she’s been well trained, if I may put it like that. In other words, she’s assumed the habits of a certain set, a certain lifestyle.’
‘I think I understand.’
‘Then I don’t need to be more specific. I’m not claiming that it’s admirable, but it is human. The reporters don’t understand that, and every time one of us has an affair, they say it’s a great romance … Jean, my chequebook!’
He only had his dinner jacket left to put on. He looked at his watch.
‘Last night, they had dinner out, then went to a nightclub for a drink, I didn’t ask which. As luck would have it, they ran into Marco in the company of a big blonde, a Dutch woman from the best society. They exchanged greetings from a distance, nothing more. Marco danced with his companion. Louise was on edge, and when she got back to the George-V with David, she told him, in the lift, that she felt like another bottle of champagne.’
‘Does she drink a lot?’
‘Too much. David also drank too much, but only in the evening. They chatted over their respective bottles – David only ever drank scotch – and I suspect that by the end the conversation was starting to become incoherent. After a few drinks, Louise tends to develop a guilt complex and accuses herself of every sin under the sun. What I heard from her this lunchtime was that she told David she wasn’t good enough for him, she despised herself for being nothing but a tortured female but couldn’t stop herself from running after Marco and begging him to take her back.’
‘How did Ward respond?’
‘He didn’t. He may not even have understood what she was saying. That’s why I asked you if you had proof that someone held him under in the bath. Up until midnight, or one in the morning, he tended to hold out quite well, because he would only start drinking at five in the afternoon. By about two in the morning, he’d grow vague, and I often thought he might have an accident while taking a bath. I even advised him to always have a valet with him, but he hated feeling dependent on people. That’s the reason he insisted on Arnold staying in another hotel. I wonder if it wasn’t some kind of embarrassment on his part.
‘That’s pretty much it. Louise took off her clothes and put on a dressing gown. It’s quite possible that, the bottle of champagne being empty, she took a swig of whisky. Then she got the idea into her head that she’d hurt David, and she wanted to go and apologize to him. Trust me, that’s very much like her, I know her … She went along the corridor. She swore to me that she found the door ajar. She went in. In the bathroom, she saw what you already know and, instead of calling for help, she ran to her room and threw herself on her bed. According to her, she really did want to die, which is quite possible. So she took some sleeping pills. She was already using them when she was with me, especially when she’d been drinking.’
‘How many pills?’
‘I know what you’re thinking, and you may be right. She wanted to die, because that would settle everything, but I don’t suppose she would have been too upset to carry on living either. The intention was enough, it produced the same effect. The fact remains, she rang in time … Put yourself in her shoes. For her, all this was like a nightmare, one where the real and the unreal were so mixed up that she didn’t know where she was.
‘When she came round in the hospital, it was cold reality that prevailed. Her first thought was to phone Marco, and she called his number. There was no reply. So then she called a hotel in Rue de Ponthieu where he sometimes spends the night when he’s in funds. He wasn’t there either. That’s when she thought of me. She didn’t make much sense, but she did tell me that she was lost, that David was dead, that she herself had almost died, that she was sorry she hadn’t, and she begged me to come running immediately. I told her it was impossible. After trying in vain to get more details from her, I advised her to go to Orly and take a plane for Nice.
‘That’s all, Maigret. I sent her to Lausanne, which she knows well, not in order to hide her from the police, but to avoid her being besieged by reporters and other snoopers, all the complications that are bound to ensue.
‘You tell me that David was murdered, and I believe you. I can only state categorically that it wasn’t Louise who killed him and that I haven’t the slightest idea who did. Now …’
At last he put on his dinner jacket.
‘If anyone asks for me, I’ll be at the Sporting Club,’ he said to his secretary.
‘What shall I do if it’s New York?’
‘Tell them I’ve thought it over and the answer is no.’
‘Very good, monsieur.’
‘Are you coming, Maigret?’
They took the lift together, and when it reached the ground floor, they were unpleasantly surprised to get a photographer’s flash full in their faces.
‘I should have guessed,’ Van Meulen muttered.
Shoving aside a podgy little man who was standing next to the photographer, trying to bar his way, he hurried to the exit.
‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret?’
The little man was a reporter from a local newspaper.
‘Could I possibly talk to you for a moment?’
The porter was watching them from a distance and frowning.
‘Maybe we could sit somewhere quiet …’
Maigret had enough experience of these situations to know that it was no use trying to get away, because then they would report him as saying things he had never said.
‘I don’t suppose I could buy you a drink at the bar?’ the reporter continued.
‘I’ve just had a drink.’
‘With Joseph Van Meulen?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it true that Countess Palmieri was on the Riviera this afternoon?’
‘Yes, it is.’
Maigret had sat down in an enormous leather armchair, and the reporter was opposite him, perched on the edge of a chair, notepad in hand.
‘I assume she’s the prime suspect?’
‘Why?’
‘That’s what they said when they phoned us from Paris.’
Someone must have alerted the press, either from the George-V or from the airport. Could one of the inspectors at Orly be in cahoots with a newspaper?
‘Did you miss her?’
‘By the time I got to Nice, she’d already left.’
‘For Lausanne, I know.’
The press hadn’t wasted any time.
‘I just phoned the Lausanne Palace. She arrived there from Geneva by taxi. She seemed exhausted. She refused to answer any questions from the reporters who were waiting for her and went straight up to her suite, number 204.’
The man seemed pleased to be supplying all this gen to Detective Chief Inspector Maigret.
‘She asked for a bottle of champagne to be brought up, then sent for a doctor, who’s expected at any moment. Do you think she killed the colonel?’
‘I’m not as quick as you and your colleagues.’
‘Will you be going to Lausanne?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘By tomorrow morning’s plane? You do know that the colonel’s third wife lives in Lausanne and that she and Countess Palmieri can’t
stand each other?’
‘No, I didn’t know that.’
A strange interview, in which it was the reporter who was providing information.
‘Assuming she’s guilty, I don’t suppose you’re allowed to arrest her?’
‘Not without an extradition warrant, no.’
‘And I assume that in order to get an extradition warrant, it’s necessary to supply positive proof?’
‘Listen, my friend, I have the impression you’re making up your article as you go along and I don’t advise you to write it in that tone. There’s no question of an arrest, or an extradition.’
‘Isn’t the countess a suspect?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘So—’
This time, Maigret lost his temper.
‘No!’ he almost yelled, even making the porter jump. ‘I haven’t told you anything for the perfectly good reason that I don’t know anything, and if you put in my mouth the kind of suggestive statements you’ve just been spouting, you’ll have me to answer to.’
‘But—’
‘No buts!’ he said with finality, standing up and heading for the bar.
He was so angry that without even realizing it he ordered a Martini. The barman, who was looking at him curiously, must have recognized him from his photographs. Two or three people, sitting on high stools, turned and stared at him. In spite of the porter’s precautions, everyone knew by now that he was in the hotel.
‘Where are the phone booths?’
‘On the left, in the corridor.’
Grumpily, he shut himself in the first one.
‘Give me Paris, please. Danton 44.20.’
The lines weren’t busy, and he only had five minutes to wait. He walked up and down the corridor. The telephone rang before the five minutes were up.
‘Police Judiciaire? Put me through to the inspectors’ office. This is Maigret … Hello? Is Lucas still there?’
He suspected that good old Lucas had also had an eventful day, and that he wouldn’t be getting to bed early.
‘Is that you, chief?’
‘Yes. I’m in Monte Carlo. Any news?’
‘You probably know by now that, despite all our precautions, the press has the story.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘The third edition of France-Soir has a big article on its front page. At four in the afternoon, some English reporters arrived from London at the same time as a Monsieur Philps, some kind of lawyer or notary—’
‘Solicitor.’
‘That’s it. He insisted on seeing the commissioner personally. They were together for more than an hour. When he came out, he was besieged by press people asking him questions and taking photographs of him, and he even hit one of the photographers with his umbrella and tried to smash his camera.’
‘Is that all?’
‘They’re saying that Ward’s mistress, the little countess, committed the murder, and that you personally are on her trail. Oh, and a man named John Arnold telephoned me. He seems furious.’
‘What happened after that?’
‘The reporters invaded the George-V. The hotel called the police to throw them out.’
‘Where’s Lapointe?’
‘Right here. He’d like to talk to you. Shall I put him on?’
Lapointe’s voice:
‘Hello, chief? … I went to the American Hospital in Neuilly as agreed. I questioned the nurse, the switchboard operator and the receptionist. When she left, Countess Palmieri handed a letter to the receptionist and asked her to post it. It was addressed to Count Marco Palmieri in Rue de l’Étoile. As I hadn’t learned anything interesting at the hospital, I went to that address. It’s quite a smart-looking apartment house. I questioned the manageress, who was a bit reluctant to speak to me at first. Apparently, Count Palmieri didn’t sleep there last night, which isn’t unusual for him. He came back about eleven o’clock this morning, looking worried, without even dropping by the lodge to see if there was any mail for him. Less than half an hour later, he set off again, carrying a little suitcase. There’s been no sign of him since.’
Maigret was silent, because he had nothing to say, and he sensed that at the other end Lapointe was disconcerted.
‘What do I do? Should I keep looking for him?’
‘If you like.’
The reply was ideally phrased to disorientate Lapointe even more.
‘Don’t you think …?’
What had Van Meulen told him earlier? Everyone was capable of committing murder, provided there was sufficient motive. Passion … Could that be the case here, when Louise had been married for nearly three years to another man and had been the colonel’s mistress for more than a year? Hadn’t she actually been on the verge of leaving the colonel and going back to her first husband?
Financial gain? How would Palmieri benefit from Ward’s death?
Maigret was somewhat discouraged, as often happened to him at the beginning of an investigation. There was always a moment when the people involved seemed unreal and there was something insubstantial about their actions.
During such periods, Maigret was sullen, somehow heavier, denser than usual. Even though young Lapointe was the newest in the team, he was starting to know him well enough to realize what was happening, even at the other end of a telephone line.
‘I’ll do my best, chief. I’ve drawn up a list of the people who are in those photographs. There are just two or three still to be identified.’
The air was stifling in the booth, especially as Maigret wasn’t dressed for the Riviera. He went back to the bar to finish his drink and noticed tables laid for dinner on the terrace.
‘Can I eat here?’
‘Yes. But I think those tables are reserved, as they are every evening. We can seat you inside.’
Good God! If they’d dared, they would probably have asked him to eat with the staff!
5.
In which Maigret finally meets somebody who doesn’t have money and worries about it
He slept badly, without completely losing consciousness of the place where he was, the hotel with its 200 open windows, the street lamps around the public gardens with their bluish lawns, the casino as faded in its charms as the old ladies in their old-fashioned outfits whom he had seen entering after dinner, the lazy sea which, every twelve seconds – he had counted them over and over, the way others count sheep – fell in a wet fringe on the rocky shore.
Cars stopped outside and left again, performing complicated manoeuvres. Their doors slammed. Voices were so distinct that you felt you were being indiscreet, and there were still noisy coaches bringing in gamblers in batches and taking others away. There was music, too, on the terrace of the Café de Paris opposite.
When, by some miracle, silence briefly fell, the light, anachronistic sound of a horse-drawn carriage could be discerned in the background, like a flute in an orchestra.
He had left his window open because he was hot. But as he hadn’t brought any luggage with him and was lying there without pyjamas, he was soon freezing cold and went to close the window. As he did so, he glanced sullenly at the lights of the Sporting Club over at the far end of the beach, where Joseph Van Meulen, ‘Daddy’, as the little countess called him, was presiding over a table of twenty people.
Because his mood was no longer the same, these people appeared to him in a different light, and he was angry with himself now, felt almost humiliated at having listened to Van Meulen like a well-behaved child, almost without daring to interrupt him.
Had he been flattered, when it came down to it, that such a respectable man should treat him with such friendly familiarity? Unlike John T. Arnold, the plump, annoyingly self-confident little Englishman, Van Meulen hadn’t seemed to be giving him a lecture on the habits of a certain social set and had even appeared touched by the fact that Maigret had come all that way in person.
‘Now, you,’ he seemed to be saying constantly, ‘you understand me.’
Had Maigret allowed himself to b
e taken in? Daddy … The little countess … David … And all these other first names they used without bothering to specify who they were talking about, as if the whole world simply had to be in the know …
He dozed off a little, turned over heavily, suddenly had an image of the colonel naked in his bath, then of Van Meulen, also naked, being kneaded by the masseur who looked like a boxer.
Were these people too civilized to be above suspicion?
‘Any man is capable of committing murder, provided he has sufficient motive and is convinced he won’t get caught.’
Van Meulen, though, didn’t think that passion was sufficient motive. Hadn’t he been subtly implying that for some people, passion is almost unthinkable?
‘At our age … A pleasant young woman, who’s been well trained …’
Their little countess had called the doctor, had moaned and groaned, had let herself be taken to hospital, then quietly telephoned, first to Paris, trying to reach her first husband who was still her occasional lover, then good old Daddy Van Meulen.
She knew that Ward was dead. She had seen the body. The poor little thing was at her wits’ end.
Should she call the police? Out of the question. She was far too shaken. And what could the police, with their big boots and their narrow minds, understand of the affairs of people like them?
‘Get on a plane, my dear. Come and see me and I’ll advise you.’
Meanwhile, the other man, John T. Arnold, arrived at the George-V and handed out advice, made barely veiled suggestions.
‘Please don’t tell the press. Handle with care. This business is dynamite. There are major interests at stake. The whole world will be shaken.’
And yet he was the one who had phoned the lawyers in London and told them to come running, probably to help him cover things up.
Van Meulen, as calmly as if it was the most natural, most legitimate thing in the world, had sent Countess Palmieri to Lausanne to rest.
No, she wasn’t running away. She wasn’t trying to evade the police.
‘You see, she’s used to the place. She’ll avoid being besieged by reporters and all the other fuss that surrounds a police investigation.’
Maigret 51 Maigret Travels Page 7
